Leveraging Donations is Working

Posted: Dec. 10, 2009

Rob Moir and Guiseppina Tesco Awarded Prestigious Research Project Grants as a Result of Cure Alzheimer’s Fund Start-up Funding

A big win by Cure Alzheimer’s Fund has come by investing small amounts of money in what some deem as more risky research. These research ideas often are very innovative and therefore not appealing to traditional funding sources.

However, Cure Alzheimer’s Fund’s entrepreneurial approach and ability to nimbly provide funding in an efficient manner allow us to purse this potentially groundbreaking work. And it’s paying off. We invest in the early-stage research, giving researchers the opportunity to better understand their research hypotheses and to gather preliminary results, setting the stage for them to apply for much larger government grants.

Two Cure Alzheimer’s Fund researchers, Rob Moir of Massachusetts General Hospital and Guiseppina Tesco of the Department of Neuroscience at Tufts University School of Medicine, have accomplished exactly this.

Dr. Moir’s work is focused on the concept that Abeta, a peptide shown to be a primary initiator of Alzheimer’s pathology, is an antimicrobial peptide and part of the innate immune system. His early work on this subject, funded by Cure Alzheimer’s Fund, just resulted in a research project grant (R01). An RO1 is the original and historically oldest grant mechanism used by the National Institutes of Health. The R01 provides support for health-related research and development.

Dr. Tesco has done pioneering work in the relationship between traumatic brain injury and Alzheimer’s. After her initial paper on the topic in the journal Neuron in 2007, Cure Alzheimer’s Fund supported her continued pilot studies, leading to her recent award of two RO1 grants for major studies in this field.